"There," said Sabina, crowning Elizabeth's head lightly with the forget-me-not wreath, which she had just completed. "Carry it home so, and you'll not crush it."
"Then it may stay there," said she, laughing, as she arose. "Many thanks for my ride! Good-night, uncle, good-night, Sabina!"
And then she hastened through the house and garden, and was soon outside the gate, which she closed behind her, and flew along up the narrow moonlit forest path. In the dwelling-room above, the lamp was burning; in spite of the bright moonlight, its beams were distinctly visible, for the front of her home lay in deep shade.
As she reached the little clearing, a remarkable shadow fell across her path. It was neither a tree nor a post, but the figure of a man, a stranger, who had been standing upon one side of the path, and now, to her terror, approached her. The apparition courteously removed its hat, and Elizabeth's terror vanished on the instant, for she saw before her the smiling, good-humoured countenance of a well dressed, rather elderly man.
"I pray your pardon, Fräulein, if I have frightened you," he said, as he looked kindly over the large, shining glasses of his spectacles into her face. "I assure you, I have no designs either upon your life or your purse, and am simply a peaceful traveller, returning to his home, who greatly desires to know what the light in the ruins yonder may betoken; and yet this moment convinces me that my question is quite superfluous. Fairies and elves are holding their revels there, while the fairest among them keeps guard in the forest around, that none may invade their charmed circle with impunity."
This gallant comparison, trite as it may appear, was not ill applied at this moment, for the slight girlish figure in white robes, with the blue wreath crowning her angelic countenance, and bathed in moonlight, might well have been mistaken for a fairy vision, as it glided so lightly among the trees of the wood.
She herself laughed inwardly at the quaint compliment, but with a little pique at the thought of resembling such a mercurial elfish being, and she replied to the old gentleman with maidenly dignity.
"I am really sorry," she said, "to be forced to lead you back to realities, but I fail to see anything in the light yonder, except a commonplace lamp in the dwelling-room of a forester's clerk in the service of the Prince of L——."
"Ah!" laughed the gentleman, "and does the man live all alone in those uncanny old walls?"
"He might do so with a quiet mind, for over those whose consciences are pure nothing uncanny can have any power. Nevertheless some loving creatures bear him company, among the rest, two well-fed goats and a canary bird, not to mention the owls, who have retired into private life in great indignation, since the frivolous conduct of human beings does not assort at all well with the solemn views of life entertained by their grave worships."